gold hiding spots

[Mrlimb]

This maybe a silly question.
I have found most of my gold behind rocks and I am not talking about large quantities. I know a good place to look is gravel bars and inside bends but does gold as a general rule simply stop in the deep water of a outside bend or does it always make its way onto the bar. I have not heard of people chasing it in the deep but being heavy I thought that is where it might be hiding.

Any thoughts

 

[Tuz]

Gold is where you find it. Haha. Sometimes gold will be found on outside bends particularly sharp bends, bends with large rocks or cracks in bedrock. You will find that, a lot of the time, deep holes have been mostly washed out (hence why it is a hole) so, there will be little, if any, gold there. It all really depends on how the water had flowed during a flood. A deep hole could also be a boil hole, meaning that the gold that did get in there got tumbled and smashed up by rocks. A lot of it, being flattened, would eventually wash out but you should still be able to find fine gold in them and maybe even some small areas (cracks in bedrock for example) where the gold (nuggets if you're lucky) was protected from said smashing.

 

[dave14110]

tuz is totally correct Gold is where you find it. generally speaking the deeper water is moving faster so gold does not stop as easy but this is not always the way. Sometimes the gold can stop because it is deep and water speed has slow so gold drops.
Obstacles play a big role here too hense the saying "Gold is where you find it".

 

[dwt]

I bought an awesome book a few years back called "fists full of gold" that really goes into depth on rivers and streams and where gold can get trapped and be found,i was allways hunting the glory holes an old small water fall or deep holes, after reading this book the author went onto explain how shallow/and some deeper holes tend not to have gold due to the pounding they can cop from other rocks hitting the gold smashing it into flour gold,and or flattening it out, and carting it down the river for the next guy to pick up in a crevice......... 8.(

 

[20x]

read the creek as if its full and flooding,at the highest water line the width is different...narrow = fast/wide = slow!

 

[Mrlimb]

Thanks for the info, the more I learn the less I know. Thanks again :8

 

[Goldtarget]

Depends on the stream. Constant type patterns emerge, and this is the generally accepted view. But if w always do the same spots over and over in the same way we have to star thinking outside the box a little. Personally I've sat in creek beds both dry and wet, and the difference to what you think may be occurring to what is actually happening can be quite profound. I think the best piece of advice i can give in a general sense is take a small section of the wider expanse and ask yourself between point a and point b where would the gold be. We are talking broad terms and each little part has its own personality, and may work very differently in flood compared to steady flow. Breaking the big picture up into smaller pieces makes it alot more managable. Think high flow vs slow flow, deep vs shallow, bedrock vs false bedrock, do i have silt or heavies, layers of flood, older alluvial deposits vs reef shedding, how old is the stream a it remains in its current course, how big are the trees on the banks and what do they tell me. Using flow principles as they occur in a sluice or sg principles of a pan, we can start to put a picture together of where the gold will accumulate in quantities worth sampling for. And you can never over sample. Each pan will tell you the strata makeup, heavies frequency, and the gold equally so. Its also very important to understand how the gold occurred in any previous successful digs, its the best stream specific info for locating other deposits. Every location is different, and so must our thinking be so. Hope that helps.

 

[20x]

Depends on the stream. Constant type patterns emerge, and this is the generally accepted view. But if w always do the same spots over and over in the same way we have to star thinking outside the box a little. Personally I've sat in creek beds both dry and wet, and the difference to what you think may be occurring to what is actually happening can be quite profound. I think the best piece of advice i can give in a general sense is take a small section of the wider expanse and ask yourself between point a and point b where would the gold be. We are talking broad terms and each little part has its own personality, and may work very differently in flood compared to steady flow. Breaking the big picture up into smaller pieces makes it alot more managable. Think high flow vs slow flow, deep vs shallow, bedrock vs false bedrock, do i have silt or heavies, layers of flood, older alluvial deposits vs reef shedding, how old is the stream a it remains in its current course, how big are the trees on the banks and what do they tell me. Using flow principles as they occur in a sluice or sg principles of a pan, we can start to put a picture together of where the gold will accumulate in quantities worth sampling for. And you can never over sample. Each pan will tell you the strata makeup, heavies frequency, and the gold equally so. Its also very important to understand how the gold occurred in any previous successful digs, its the best stream specific info for locating other deposits. Every location is different, and so must our thinking be so. Hope that helps.

excellently said!

 

[GoldCheddar2005]

Currently I am finding the profile between two sites very different even though they are geographically very close. Dittmer, I tend to look for bedrock on the ridge side of the stream, going into the hill. Yesterday I went exploring what was the ridge above Happy Valley, now the road into the Peter Faust Dam. Very, very different, Same rocks, but sitting very different, looking through Trove last night found images of that ridge prior and during the construction of the Dam. The location of the parent deposits I found yesterday would put tears in a grown fossickers eyes.

 

[dwt]

After a busy morning i thought i would do some exploring and check out what i found,defiantly will be crevicing some of these areas looks like a solid spot for some serious high banking as well, wont be able to drag in one of my trommels though it is foot access only for the best part of 1/2 a km..... 8)

then i found this pretty hard to get your head around this one for a while, quite amazing i thought in solid bed rock

took some samples home and have the clays soaking in truck wash(ct18) to help break down the clays and also break the surface tension of water so i dont loose any flat gold on sieving and panning,hopefully have some gold to post pics of later

 

[MJB]

I dream of crevises like those...keep us posted. Would like to see what that little dish held.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Goldagettin]

That spot looks drool worthy, I love the way the bedrock looks. I'm keen to see how this pans out for you...(pun intended..lol) Fingers are crossed for you dwt.

 

[Goldtarget]

In an attempt to go a bit further cracking open a good crevice (thanks dwt) will be a better than average return for time. Was out today digging midstream (surprise there's gold there too) and after some scouting around at many likely spots i found a crumbling bedrock perpendicular to the flow. i scrapped what i could from the bottoms and bam gold in the pan, twice what i had for the morning in 15 mins. The reason though is the flow takes a sharp right angle like turn just prior and had deposits in front and behind and inside. It produced more on the upstream side due to the flow pushing it hard up against the rock, but traditionally if we just follow the hard rule of the downstream side it would have been missed. A "dead" zone will allow thegold drop, the flow makes a "z" shape and drops away to a deep straight section, all it needs is someone paying attention to scoop up the loot. Now i have no idea if the diggings above this zone produced but they dug about 2m3 no more than 2 metres from where i was chasing the inside bend. I dug three buckets, and left alot more for a quick .1 and speci with more fines than i know what to do with.

 

[dwt]

nice work goldtarget, think the Dr and i will be throwing you a gernzie to some of these creek beds mate, 6eyes better than 4, 3 shovels better than 2, i havnt had time to process the samples yet,might be tomorrow or wed, i will admit they were pretty random grabs considering i had such along way to carry the buckets out............fingers crossed

 

[Brumble-Gum]

Generally gold and fish sit in the same areas in flowing water. (Either normal flow or flooding).
Fisherman have the knowledge but don't link the two together.
A jewfish (Mulloway) will sit either in front or behind a bridge pylon or just on the inside bend. The same with trout in a stream. The reason they sit where they are is the waterflow has slowed so they conserve energy. This slow in flow is where the gold drops out also.

 

[20x]

Generally gold and fish sit in the same areas in flowing water. (Either normal flow or flooding).
Fisherman have the knowledge but don't link the two together.
A jewfish (Mulloway) will sit either in front or behind a bridge pylon or just on the inside bend. The same with trout in a stream. The reason they sit where they are is the waterflow has slowed so they conserve energy. This slow in flow is where the gold drops out also.

interesting perspective!

 

[Goldtarget]

You can't always trust your eyes. Take a nice round piece of wood and throw it in, the flow will do the rest, it will show you the fast water and any dead zones pretty quick. If i saw the wood stop somewhere I'll bet even money the gold will drop out below it, and take note of where the pace picks up between high and low flows.